I'm a newish star here at Quirk. I’ve naturally followed a lot of the posts on our blog and when a “Site of Note” opportunity came up, I was very eager to jump in and I knew I just had to write about Rocking The Daisies.com.

Rocking the Daisies is a local music festival that happens once a year and features some excellent local and international talent. The festival is also focused around being ecologically friendly. In this post I’ll be focusing on the aspects of the Rocking The Daisies site that led me to choose it as a Site of Note: usability, look and feel and back end.

I came across this site after a co-worker mentioned how incredible it is. After loading the page I got that “WOW” feeling that all designers and coders hope to create with their sites. The navigation is clear and easy to understand. The homepage is clean and cuts to the chase. The images are optimised perfectly and the videos load quickly and are of great quality. While there are pros and cons to building a site in WordPress rather than coding it from scratch, this site is an excellent example of how WordPress can be used with great results.

Usability:

Usability is the ease with which a normal Web user, like many of us, is able to navigate and use a website’s functionality. Some of the pages take a little longer to load, but generally it’s quite quick and the images display almost immediately. Simple and clear navigation, coupled with a really clear call to action (CTA) for tickets and essential information available on the home page certainly demonstrate a well thought-out website. There are secured areas for journalist and photographers to use as well.

Look and Feel:

The use of colour creates a strong contrast between the different elements throughout the site. This works well for the user’s journey through the site and makes the main CTAs stand out so the user can easily find what they are looking for. The colour is very fitting for what RTD epitomises - a rustic, earthy (hippie) rock festival in the peak of spring.

The site has a fair amount of content which has been handled well through its “grid” like layout, especially on the home page. The content layout of the lower level pages could have been given more thought, and I would also suggest that the main slider image only be on the home page or reduced in size on the others. Given that the other pages serve as content/information pages, it’s also surprising that the header pushes the content below the fold - hiding the information that the user is looking for.

These are just 2 small design and usability issues to keep in mind when designing any website.

Back End:

I must admit, I know absolutely nothing about the back end of WordPress, so I had a little assistance in this area. WordPress’ back end is very useful for people who aren’t coders. No HTML or CSS is used so no experience with these is required. All images and content can be added through the back end. The back end is easy to navigate, can be used to manage your posts, comments, write a post, read the latest happenings in the WordPress community (dashboard), change your themes, active/deactivate plugins, add a link in your blogroll and the list goes on and on and on, oh and on... you even get themes which you can add to your back end, which makes it just that much cooler.

So that’s a bit about WordPress and a light overview of an absolutely great website – RockingtheDaisies.com. We’re all looking forward to a great festival this year! 

 Also check out:

• WordPress is a CMS
  
• Friday Fact Box - Wordpress
• Site of Note: Lacostered.com
• Site of Note: BoonOakley